The Internet has proven to be an efficient and popular mechanism for the dissemination of information from content providers to content recipients. Content providers in many cases are organizations, such as businesses, governmental agencies, educational institutions, and the like, who operate Web sites where such organizations provide information that can be downloaded by content recipients.
The content recipients are often consumers who use computers typically located in their dwellings to access the content provided by content providers. However, content recipients may also be other businesses, governmental agencies, educational institutions, and the like. In many cases, a content provider is also a content recipient. The information provided by content providers to content recipients often includes advertisements in which organizations advertise their goods and/or services.
Content is typically provided directly by a Web site to content recipients. However, additional information concerning such content is frequently provided at another Web site and is accessed by way of click-through URLs.
Often, the operators of Web sites offering content such as advertisements to content recipients, as well as those who create and place such content as offerings by Web sites, desire to measure the amount exposure of the content. Exposure is typically determined by the number of times that particular offerings are provided visibly and/or audibly to content recipients. Web site owners, and those who create and place content, may then draw market relevant conclusions from the measured amount of exposure.
Several arrangements have been proposed as attempts to measure exposure. For example, it is known for a Web site to itself measure the number of times that content recipients access its content offerings. However, exposure can at best only be inferred from this measurement because the Web site cannot determine for certain whether the content of interest is ever visible or audible to the content recipient. Also, a measurement at a single Web site provides little information about exposure of the content offered by other Web sites, such as competitive Web sites. Moreover, even if measurements are made at a plurality of Web sites, it is difficult to extrapolate the resulting data over relevant segments of the population.
Therefore, it has also been proposed to install software meters on the computers of panelists so that exposure to content of panelists can be measured and extrapolated over the population as a whole, in much the same way that TV ratings are generated. According to this proposal, the software meters track operating system messages in order to detect communications of interest. When the software meters detect communications of interest, the software meters log the titles of the corresponding windows which are displayed to a computer user because Internet content, as well as application software interfaces, are typically provided to the user in a window format. However, logging titles of windows is not particularly useful because such titles can be very generic. For example, one such title which is popular with many content providers is simply "Home Page." This title provides little indication of the information supplied to the content recipient.
Tagging of Internet content has been broadly suggested in the context of requiring widespread industry cooperation. However, it is unlikely that such widespread industry cooperation is attainable.
Moreover, now that the source code of the Netscape Navigator.RTM. browser has been made publicly available, it is possible to provide a software meter by appropriate modification of this browser. For example, this source code defines several objects that represent both the screen position and state of images being displayed in the browser. The methods implemented by these objects may be augmented to include a software meter for collecting exposure data. However, in this case, the browser operating on a panelists computer must be replaced by the browser which is modified to measure content exposure. Accordingly, panelist cooperation becomes an issue. Also, extreme care must be taken to avoid unintended consequences of modifying browser code.
Furthermore, this browser alteration option is not available with respect to the Internet Explorer browser because its source code is not available.
The present invention is directed to a metering system which solves one or more of the above noted problems.